Read This If You're Not Making Progress Anymore In Your Self-Improvement Journey

So, you stalled.

As you know, self-improvement is a life-long journey. And as with every journey worth pursuing, there are inevitably ups and downs. If you've read my weight-loss course (in case you're interested, click here), I've explained that self-improvement, if represented as a graph, was not a perfect, straight line.

In fact, self-improvement, if represented as a graph, would be more like a chain of mountains, going up and down and up and down but as a bigger picture, as a whole, when you zoom out, it goes up. That is self-improvement. We play, we tumble, we fail, and we get back up to re-try. We learn, we improve and we overcome.

But what if you're not making any progress? What if you're feeling like you're almost not on self-improvement? You're not progressing, you're less motivated, you're bored, and you might fall back into your old bad habits. If this happens, try to get back on track as soon as possible. Continue to work relentlessly on self-improvement, and use the following rule I am going to teach you.

The following rule will help you in ALL walks of life, forever. It is a golden rule, a golden egg, a golden nugget, whatever you want to call it, but it's golden for sure. This rule, as simple as it may seem, is probably one of the greatest you will ever hear in your life, as important as the 80-20 Paleo principle.

SUBSTRACT BEFORE ADDING.

A lot of people when they get into self-improvement are eager to make progress, and that's fair! So they add and add and add and add. That's incredible! However, as self-improvement becomes a life-long process many people quit because they just can't handle it. They add they add, they add, and they finish by falling back into their old bad habits because they haven't subtracted fully.

Subtracting is important. It's simplicity. To be more concrete with the idea, let's find an example. Let's say you go to the gym, and you get decent results, but you're not getting incredible results. It's been one or two years but you still look kind of skinny, you haven't made much progress.

Instead of adding: adding sets, exercises, reps, food, sleep, etc, you should first subtract, or subtract whilst adding. Because yes, adding will help, and might even help a lot, but it's not always the solution. If you're not making progress and adding doesn't work, then it's not the solution.

You need to learn to subtract. But subtract what?

Learning to subtract

You should learn to subtract bad habits. You should learn to subtract the sheer amount of bullshit you put yourself through every day, such as "It's alright ten more candies", or "It's alright if I go to sleep at 2 AM today."

You should learn to first, identify, and second, subtract. This rule, identifying and subtracting the bad habits, will probably help you more than if you just added like a fucking monkey who couldn't think. Stop being a brain-dead unintelligent man or woman, and start thinking.

In the example of having a decent physique after years of training, instead of adding, first consider removing, subtracting, and erasing bad habits from your daily life. Maybe you bullshit yourself by eating four chocolate squares a day. Erase that. Sugar is not good for you. Maybe you bullshit yourself by stopping at the fast food joint 3 times a week.

Maybe you bullshit yourself drinking alcohol like a fucking weak man every day, maybe you bullshit yourself wasting one hour in front of the fucking TV every-single day and therefore wasting one hour of additional sleep. Maybe you bullshit yourself by wasting hours playing video games instead of focusing on bettering your life and your training program for example.

And you might say "What if I can't have tiny pleasures of life?!" but fucking hell, wasting HOURS on video games, even ONE HOUR, even THIRTY MINUTE, is what differentiates the losers from the winners! Now if you want to stay a total loser, then no problem, stay a total loser. BUT IF YOU WANT TO GROW AS A BETTER PERSON, IF YOU WANT TO MAKE PROGRESS FOR REAL, THEN GIVE UP THAT SHIT.

I hope this worked as a reminder that you shouldn't get complacent now. You should turn the light on and start working. Because yes, it's good to be balanced. Yes, eating at a restaurant once in a while is nice. Yes, junk food once in a while (not thrice a week) is alright. But TV or video games? Daily? Are you still a kid? Are you still a child?

Seriously, some people really are monkeys. They say it's for "pleasure" or "relaxing" but you're clearly not relaxing when destroying your brain and tiring it out, and you're having pleasure whilst destroying your life like a dumbass. Sorry for the strong vocabulary but this is your wake-up call if you're on this downward spiraling path.

Anyways, learn to subtract. Subtract the bad habits before adding too many good habits. What I recommend is to subtract whilst adding. Therefore, you make more progress than usual. If you subtract the bad habit of junk food and replace it with the good habit of eating more fruits then you make progress faster, it's logical.

How this can be applied in all walks of life

Let's take many walks of life and let's see how this principle or rule can be applied for the better.

GYM PROGRESS: Instead of adding a ton of exercises if you stalled in your gym progress, try to hit the underlying factors by subtracting even the tiniest thing that might affect your progress. Remove the high artificial sugar, hormone-destroying protein bar from your diet. Erase the one hour of TV for one hour of sleep.

BUSINESS: Instead of trying to be productive by creating more content even at the expense of the quality, focus on the quality first, and to do so start subtracting the things that take you away from your productivity. Maybe it's your bad diet full of unhealthy carbs which makes your brain foggy. Also, fun addition to this, you can use the adding rule to make this even better. You could subtract for example your bad diet, and add a better diet. You could add meditation. In some cases, instead of subtracting you should add, but if you added a lot of good habits and your progress is still stalling, then you need to still identify what you could subtract to make more progress.

HORMONE OPTIMIZATION: If you want to optimize your testosterone as a man for example, you could begin by adding supplements, better ingredients, more sleep, etc, but you should also subtract. Subtract for example the junk food you eat during the week or the plastic bottles you drink in because it does affect your hormones by adding microplastics to your blood. It's a transaction you need to deal with.

BETTER SLEEP: Instead of adding hours and hours of sleep to get better sleep, maybe try to optimize your sleep in the hours that you can. If you can only sleep 8 hours (which is great by the way), instead of trying to get better sleep by sleeping 10 hours by going to bed 2 hours earlier (which you could), I suggest instead removing the things that take you away from a bad sleep. Maybe it's watching your phone before bed. Maybe it's eating too much before bed. Maybe it's not turning off the micro-lights emitting from some devices before bed. So, instead of sleeping more like a dumb donkey, start optimizing the few hours you have by subtracting what is unhelpful and adding what is helpful. This way, you can better your sleep quality and it can become sustainable for life.

LOVING RELATIONSHIP: Instead of adding time spent together, make the time count. Remove the distractions, subtract the phone notifications, the friends, and all the bullshit that could take you away from spending high-quality time with your partner. This can't always be done as sometimes you'll see each other for other reasons than enjoying each other presence, but when it's necessary, subtract first.

What I'm trying to fundamentally convey here

What I'm trying to fundamentally convey here is that you should always work on the underlying factors instead of focusing on the shallow method. For example, instead of hitting at a tree everywhere to break it, which might take months and months because you're just punching at every spot you see, it's way smarter to just find a specific point, and punch at this specific point a thousand times until the tree breaks apart.

Always work on the underlying factor, which is sometimes subtracting before adding. If you can't add much and your life is not progressing, subtract. If you subtract the good habits, you'll have more free time for good habits, more free "brain space" for good habits, and more presence and power in the world. Your life, brain, and soul will not be weakened, you'll be stronger and smarter. You'll be wiser too.

So, instead of caring about adding more sleep hours, focus on optimizing what you already have. Instead of adding hours upon hours of exercise if you're not gaining muscle (which could help but only if you're working out once a week), focus on your hormonal system, your diet, and your sleep patterns. Optimize these to optimize the gym. By doing so, you might create an upward spiral that pushes you to victory.

Conclusion

You need to subtract before adding or subtract whilst adding, but it's often stupid to just add without subtracting. It's not a strategy that works anyway because we've only got 24 hours a day. If something is added, then something has to be removed. It's a universal law for anything you do.

You need to work on the underlying factors instead of focusing on the superficial. Perfect your form instead of the weight you lift. Have a better diet and rest more instead of taking steroids. It's logical for some who are quite advanced on self-improvement but it might not appear obvious to the general population.

Always remember that ups and downs are normal. You might fail from time to time and it's alright if you learn from your mistakes and you get back up no matter what. We're human. But we want to be strong humans. So never give up and get back on track as soon as possible.

Finally, thank you for reading. I really appreciate the fact that you, the reader, help us at ALWAYS IMPROVING to provide work weekly by reading our content. You indirectly support us, even if you view the article, it's already a form of support, it's a form of helping us and encouraging us. So, thank you.

As always I'll see you next time.

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